~ Poets Pub

Poetics: MISSING YOU

‘I MISS YOU’…three words that appear in our heads from time to time, often prompted by a memory, a sight, or even distance. For me, and most recently over the past few weeks whilst pondering on a topic for this prompt, these words seem to have become more relevant than ever.

So good afternoon & evening to you all! My name is Stuart McPherson, and once again I’m delighted to be your host for today’s POETICS!

Now, let me try and explain why I’ve chosen this particular subject, and it’s really very simple. I got homesick. I got homesick and I couldn’t escape it, it really is as simple as that.

As part of my work, I am lucky enough to be able to travel, and recently have been away for a good two week stretch. Now, any folks would see travelling as part of your work as being ‘glamorous’, but the reality is you see a lot of airport lounges, a lot of soulless hotel rooms, a lot of vacant ceilings staring back at you. You ALSO get to see some amazing places (and I’m certainly not complaining), BUT…and this is the rub…they aren’t the same unless you have someone to share them with. It just so happened that on this occasion, I felt it more than ever. Despite my surroundings and experiences, I missed my Wife, I missed my home, I missed my Cat (even if she does bite my feet)…I missed EVERYTHING

‘Plane Wing’ taken by Stuart McPherson November 2012

And then it occurred to me what a deeply human and commonly shared emotion that ‘MISSING YOU’ really is. We feel it about all sorts of things. We miss lost loved ones, old friends, first loves, old haunts, special places, special times in our lives. We miss our pets, we miss our favourite old pair of pants, we miss lazy Saturday evenings watching TV & spilling pizza down ourselves, we miss LOTS of things.

In a way, the things we miss, and the feelings recreated, is simply an assurance of who we are and the experiences that penetrate into our very DNA, our own individuality.

Lights at Copenhagen Harbour by Stuart McPherson, November 2012

And I thought, how good would it be to share that. For us to express poetically, a feeling of ‘missing’ or ‘longing for’

To give an example, let me turn to one of my all time favourite poems by Pablo Neruda, which captures that real sense of ‘I MISS YOU’. This poem is one of my absolute all time favourites. It moves me every time I read it.

A DOG HAS DIED

By Pablo Neruda

Translated by ALFRED YANKAUER

My dog has died.
I buried him in the garden
next to a rusted old machine.

Some day I’ll join him right there,
but now he’s gone with his shaggy coat,
his bad manners and his cold nose,
and I, the materialist, who never believed
in any promised heaven in the sky
for any human being,
I believe in a heaven I’ll never enter.
Yes, I believe in a heaven for all dogdom
where my dog waits for my arrival
waving his fan-like tail in friendship.

Ai, I’ll not speak of sadness here on earth,
of having lost a companion
who was never servile.
His friendship for me, like that of a porcupine
withholding its authority,
was the friendship of a star, aloof,
with no more intimacy than was called for,
with no exaggerations:
he never climbed all over my clothes
filling me full of his hair or his mange,
he never rubbed up against my knee
like other dogs obsessed with sex.

No, my dog used to gaze at me,
paying me the attention I need,
the attention required
to make a vain person like me understand
that, being a dog, he was wasting time,
but, with those eyes so much purer than mine,
he’d keep on gazing at me
with a look that reserved for me alone
all his sweet and shaggy life,
always near me, never troubling me,
and asking nothing.

Ai, how many times have I envied his tail
as we walked together on the shores of the sea
in the lonely winter of Isla Negra
where the wintering birds filled the sky
and my hairy dog was jumping about
full of the voltage of the sea’s movement:
my wandering dog, sniffing away
with his golden tail held high,
face to face with the ocean’s spray.

Joyful, joyful, joyful,
as only dogs know how to be happy
with only the autonomy
of their shameless spirit.

There are no good-byes for my dog who has died,
and we don’t now and never did lie to each other.

So now he’s gone and I buried him,
and that’s all there is to it.

And so to today’s prompt!

Write a poem that encompasses ‘MISSING YOU’
It could be a poem about:-

Someone you miss dearly (a loved one, a wife, a child)

A friend that you wish you could see again

A time or place that you miss (why do you miss it?)

A situation that made you ‘miss someone’

You could even write about a favourite item of clothing you miss!

You could write about a piece of music that reminds you of someone- it makes you miss them

An object that makes you miss someone or think about someone

THIS IS WIDE OPEN! This can be interpreted in so many different ways.

WHAT TO DO NEXT

Write your poem and post it to your blog

Add a link to your poem via the ‘Mr Linky’ below

This opens a new screen where you’ll enter your information, and where you also choose links to read. Once you have pasted your poem’s blog URL and entered your name, click Submit. Don’t worry if you don’t see your name right away

Read and comment on other peoples work to let them know it’s being read

Share this:

Like this:

LikeLoading...

Related

About youbuu

My name is Stuart. I’m a life coach based in the UK. I help individuals to enact meaningful change and achieve deep fulfilment in their day to day lives.
You can visit my website for more information about me, my background & coaching, as well as regular blog articles on life impacting topics.
You can contact me via:-
Email: stu_mcp@hotmail.com
Mobile: 07523142267
Website: www.youbuu.com

Hey Claudia! And good day to all! Feels like an age since I’ve been here! I’d just like to say thanks to Brian, Claudia and Mary- for being super flexible , and Mary – for covering my ass! V much appreciated!

So- hope you guys enjoy the prompt! Can’t wait to read what you come up with!! 🙂

Funny old world, I was on Facebook earlier and someone had reposted a short anecdote from Bill Murray on when he had last seen a friend. It’s well worth reading – the link is on my blog – so I decided to erasure the prose into what emerged as a Freeverse Shakespearean sonnet with slant rhymes! I had by then tracked down what tonight’s prompt was so did an happy dance and posted it. Stu. thanks for the opportunity

Hey John – I defo want to check out that link- I’m a big Bill Murray fan!! As for your poem, sounds VERY interesting!! Will be heading over to read shortly. Glad you liked the prompt! Sounds like fate to me!

I don’t have a new offering for this prompt, but for me, this poem conveys the feeling of missing someone, with all its sharp feelings of loss and desolation. Here’s the link: http://bit.ly/U8xAgG
Aplogies to all those who’ve read this previously, Thanks Stuart for the prompt.

I love this prompt. Was going to take a day off but now I’m going to try to write something…a thought popped into my head right away. When I head to the desert alone for a writing retreat, I miss the hubby and dogs and usually end up being not so productive. Have a wonderful home-coming, Stu, BTW, I don’t remember a Neruda poem that long!

Victoria- I’m really pleased this got your muse going! And as for those writers retreats….I would LOVE to do one of those – but I’d probably end up wanting to be at home….sheeeeshhhh!!! Great to see you

Stuart, good to see you here… One of the most evocative themes of all time – a huge number of my poems are built on the theme of ‘missing you’. My offering is an adaptation (not a translation) of one of Kotaro Takamura’s poems about his wife Chieko, long after she’d passed away. i’ve turned the poem into something more universal, so hopefully people will find a connection.

Right then Poets! I also need to get some sleeeeep! So it’s beddy times for me. Just to let you know, for people using blogger, I’m having a few tech issues leaving comments…It seems to be apple related – so I’ll be back at home to,or row and on my PC. So I WILL get there!! Same goes for anyone else I’ve not got to yet….I will be there ASAP!!!

Overwhelmed with the response to this prompt….over 40 poems in 3.5 hrs, and there is still SO long to go!!!

I keep coming back and disappearing. I swear I’m going to stay and participate a lot better.. life just keeps coming at me, but don’t worry, offline – I’m working the poetry hand or at least trying to. I’m going to try to visit everyone’s sites this weekend if time is on my side…

Hmmm, giving a topic for a prompt is much easier than a feeling. Well, at least for me. “Here, this is how you are feeling — write about it.” or “Remember when you once felt X and write about it.” Whereas a topic: Dogs, Crime, Friends, Windmills …. those you could attach any number of feelings to and write about what inspires you. But to force a feeling in a 36 hour prompt is tough. I have a few creative ideas about how to deal with that apparent limitation, but may not have time. But I did want to share my felt difficulty with such a prompt.

Someone else has a feeling, and now I have to try to feel that feeling and write about it. Argghhh. Maybe it is a guy problem. Oh well, I sure it will stretch me as a person! 🙂 Here we go ….
[great write-up, btw]

ha . have fun with it sabio…i would hope sometime you have missed someone….mark even wrote about missing hitting the mouth of the toilet…so i think you can find a topic in there even if you cant feel it…

Yeah, of course I have missed someone — that is not my point. But my muses are tied to my emotions and force up a feeling of “missing” in order to write, is tough. Sure, I can do it from memory, but it won’t be the muses speaking, it will be like a diary.

I don’t know, doesn’t anyone feel the difference between those two sorts of writings?

Now then, some people may be live constantly with some missing — one that haunts them, or live in with a feeling of being wronged or constantly sad. For those folks, it may be easier to write about missing right off the top of their head. For instance, if one of my children were gone, for what ever reason, I could probably generate a missing poem in a second.

You see — writing on a feeling from memory works if I can put up a very strong memory or if am living the emotion.’

Anyway, as I said, I can think of some alternatives — like the toilet poem of Mark.

Sabio- I think my intention was to get people to draw on memory. To revisit feelings and draw upon them as inspiration. Writing to any prompt requires a degree of focus in this way. Of course, the prompt is massively open to interpretation- so you have huge scope. Your poem doesn’t have to be focused on feelings at all, it could be fictional, it could be a whole host of things….just see where it takes you! have fun with it…and if it doesn’t work out…nothing lost and no bother!

Well, with some wrestling and methods I have learned from the patient teachers here, I did come up with something. I used your prompt using the erasure method Anna recently shared. Since neither memories nor feeling would come forward, I fluffed out my vampire cape and flew out searching for sustenance.

Stu!!! So awesome to see you…it’s been a night of tree decorating and and emergency lighting runs…proud to say it 1500+lights…Fantastic prompt that could have went so many directions, and your piece was fantastic…Drinks on me! 🙂

good morning…i’m way late…slept in and it’s snowing over here…so the world outside looks beautifully sugar coated and i got a hot cup of coffee and heading out on the poetry trail now…smiles…looking forward to catch up with the overnites..

OK, I cheated a little bit here (because I was late and uninspired) and linked to an older poem, previously posted on my blog. It’s about missing the beginning and promise of a relationship. Maybe missing the possibility of perfection…

Better late than never?? Great prompt, Stu, and I just couldn’t let it get by me! Had a B-day party for our 3 year old grand daughter yesterday though, and got tangled up in other bidness this morning. So, hope I’m not too late to the party!

I fully intend to write a proper ‘missing you’ poem when I get my breath back from 1 0 days shuffling between 2 hospitals, with 3 surgical interventions in 4 days. The thing I missed most was my laptop and wi-fi! I did write a little one which my lovely daughter put on my blog, but this prompt deserves better than that.